A Battle of Identity against Access
Language is never neutral. It carries the stamp of history, power, and ideology. Perhaps nowhere are these dynamics more palpable than in education in Pakistan, where politics of language have shaped, polarized, and remade anew and anew again the making of knowledge, to whom it is offered, and what it is to be educated in a post-colonial state.
The politics of Pakistani education is not simply a theoretical concept—it’s a day-to-day lived experience for tens of millions of learners, from the construction of curricula to career and identity alignments.
A Colonial Legacy with Lingering Shadows
Pakistan’s language issue was a heritage of its colonial past. English, the British Raj’s language, was kept at independence as a language of power, administration, and prestige. The national language enunciated in Urdu was to be a unifying vehicle for a multilingual people. But the choice was contentious, particularly for regions where other languages—Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi—were dominant.
This top-down imposition kept the local languages on the margins and evoked resistance movements in various provinces. Bengali, though, was the first to find itself the site of overt rebellion, eventually followed by the Language Movement in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The stage was thus set: linguistic identity could—and would—be a flash point of political conflict.
Linguistic Hierarchies in the Modern Classroom
Flash forward to today, and the politics of language in Pakistani schools continue to play their role in shaping instruction and privilege. Public schools operate more or less in Urdu, while private schools will teach more often in English. This creates a two-tiered education system, creating class distinction and limiting social mobility.
English-medium students typically enjoy a greater opportunity in competitive exams, university intake, and employment in local and international labor markets. Regional-language or Urdu students, on the other hand, are unfairly disadvantaged to a tremendous extent, not out of lack of ability or IQ, but only because the system structurally denied them access to elite capital.
Identity Crisis: Whose Language, Whose Nation?
Language in Pakistan cannot be uncoupled from identity by national policy, but national policies operate on the assumption of homogeneity. Uniform national language is presumed to be Urdu, but such a presumption erases the rich linguistic diversity that is the cultural support system of Pakistan.
Teachers and scholars speculate that multilingual education would better mirror the nation’s sociolinguistic reality. The model is politically dangerous to implement, however. Regional language promotion is read as being dangerous to national unity, and resistance to English is read as resistance to Globalization.
Caught in the middle are the students, with the promise of negotiating and managing multiple linguistic worlds, with no structural aid to make it happen.
The English Conundrum: Gatekeeper or Equalizer?
English is a tool in itself. It is employed to open doors one way. To shut the gates on the other side.
Implementation of English in Pakistani education creates a linguistic elitism, where a privileged group in society becomes eligible to dominate the world networks and to keep the world out. The irony is sharp: in a nation where the majority of its citizens are not native English speakers, English continues to be the language of public discourse, scientific research, and progress.
Is it simply a utilitarian choice in the interest of global competitiveness? Or is it a product of a colonial mentality that was never critically dismantled at all?
The truth, as ever, is somewhere in between.
Curriculum, Power, and the Language of Thought
The family language through which a child is educated influences how a child thinks, reasons, and communicates. A home Sindhi, school Urdu, and English-tested student thus ends up translating not language, but sense, self, and purpose.
This intellectual burden weighs most on low-income students and downplays the richness of knowledge that schooling can provide.
Except for a few thematic exercises, the content of the curriculum scarcely uses Urdu and local languages. English books, however, are more recent, professionally produced, and internationally aligned. Materials in regional and Urdu languages lag behind in quality as well as in relevance.
Moving Toward an Inclusive Language Policy
Decolonization of Pakistani education is not a recent need, but it has never been carried out in the right manner. Educationists present an argument in favor of mother-tongue-based education at grassroots levels, phased introduction of Urdu and English, and development of an indigenous curriculum on the basis of respect and representation of cultural diversity.
A few promising models have been piloted in community schools, but to scale them up will require political will, teacher professional development, and most importantly, a change in the public culture regarding what languages are “educated”.
Conclusion: Education as a Political Act
To discuss education in Pakistan is to discuss language. To discuss language is to discuss power. And power, by definition, is political.
Pakistani language politics reveal a great deal more than a taste for language—they reveal the structural inequalities, cultural skepticism, and historical continuities that constitute Pakistan’s search for identity, solidarity, and development.
Unless language is seen as an intrinsic support column of educational reform—not an afterthought or something value-free—equity in learning will be a distant dream.
